On Mozart - Paperback

by James M. Morris (Editor), Lee H. Hamilton (Editor)

On Mozart is an attempt to suggest how much more complicated a figure Mozart was than popular legends and media portrayals would have us believe. He was certainly a genius--in that, the legends are correct, and the evidence abounds--but he was also a working composer in a society crowded with other working composers, and he had to make a living at his craft to maintain the style of living to which he and his family had become accustomed. By observing a realistic and human genius, the collection of essays portrays a more complex individual than the divinely inspired Mozart of myth, who took his notes directly from God.

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From the eighteenth century to our own, Mozart has remained one of the World's most inventive and popular composers. The essays in this collection examine Mozart and his art from psychological, historical, cultural, and aesthetic perspectives. They set Mozart, first, in the timeless ahistorical space reserved for individuals of spectacular creativity, then in his time, and finally in our time. Most of the authors are not professional Mozart scholars or musicologists, but all are Mozart Lovers.